As far as District Attorney Daniel Donovan is concerned, Linares Hugo Lopez is the one who got away.

The 32-year-old illegal Mexican immigrant should be in a cell on Rikers Island, waiting for trial on charges he dunked his girl friend's18-month-old son in scalding water, but more than five years ago a boondoggle over a Spanish interpreter and a grand jury deadline set him free.

And despite being featured on "America's Most Wanted," he hasn't been seen since.

"I want to get him," Donovan says. "There's someone that knows his whereabouts, and we're hoping a $1,000 reward helps."

Lopez, then 26, was accused of plunging his son, Lester Martinez, in a sink full of scalding hot water in their 30 Dongan St. apartment in West Brighton on May 31, 2005. The boy suffered burns on 40 percent in his body, and doctors found other injuries -- neck marks consistent with choking, and cigarette burns on his shoulder.

Police arrested him, but he contended that little Lester had turned the water on himself in an attempt to give himself a bath.

On June 2, 2005, he was to testify in front of a grand jury, but he wasn't brought to the courtroom until 6 p.m., and he wanted to testify in Spanish, but the court's foreign-language interpreter had left for the day.

Donovan is convinced that Lopez requested the interpreter as a delaying tactic -- the suspect had no problem speaking in English to police investigators and the court officials who processed his bail, he says.

The grand jury hearing Lopez's case didn't reconvene again until June 7 -- one day after the law-mandated deadline to indict a suspect within 144 hours or let him go without bail, and a judge rejected prosecutors' request for an extension of his bail.

"He's the one that escaped prosecution through a technicality we believe shouldn't have happened," Donovan says. "The law allows good-cause extensions."

Lopez vanished after that, possibly fleeing to Mexico. "America's Most Wanted" featured him in an Aug. 13, 2005 episode.

Lester, now 7 years old, lives with his maternal grandparents, Faustina and Ferdinand DeLa Cruz. Aside from some speech and learning problems, he's healthy.

"He has questions about his legs and stuff like that. We tell him it was an accident," says Ferdinand DeLa Cruz. "The doctors had only given him 48 hours to survive. Considering, he's doing great."

DeLa Cruz says he can't fathom why Lopez did what authorities say he did, or where he might be hiding.

"We feel terrible that they had him, they had him in jail, but they let him go," DeLaCruz says.

CHAK MOK

As prosecutors tell it, Chak Mok's wife wanted a divorce, and she wanted to sell the house.

And that made him so angry that on the morning of November 4, 2004, he grabbed a meat cleaver and swung away, prosecutors allege.

Mok, then 53, is accused of hacking at her head and face, stopping only when his two sons, aged 22 and 15 at the time, intervened and held him back.

The attack took place inside their home on the 100 block of Mosel Avenue. His wife survived, but the attack tore a gash into her forehead and the side of her face, and she needed 33 stitches.

Mok was arrested, and admitted through a Cantonese interpreter that he hit her, prosecutors say.

A grand jury indicted him a month later, but he made the $50,000 bail set by a judge. He never showed up for a March 11, 2005 court date, and hasn't been seen since.

His wife, who ended up selling the house in March 2005, recovered from the attack and still lives on Staten Island. She wouldn't comment for this story.

GEORGE TOBAR

On Sept. 30, 2008, a group of young men showed up at Kevin Anderson's basement apartment on Copley Street in New Springville, intent on taking the stash of drugs and money he kept in a trap door near his bed.

Jorge "George" Tobar came with them, prosecutors say.

The group bound Anderson with duct tape, but the 21-year-old Anderson, described by authorities as a known drug dealer, managed to break free.

That's when prosecutors say Tobar shot Anderson in the back. Anderson managed to get to the stairs leading to the porch outside his apartment, where he collapsed.

Police managed to track down three members of the group -- Jonathan Alvarado, Ortiz Hollis and Gregory Bowser -- and in the months that followed, all three took plea deals. Hollis got 10 years behind bars, Alvarado got a five-year sentence, and Bowser got seven years.

The members of the group had ties to both the Bloods and Latin Kings street gangs, prosecutors say.

Police never found Tobar, who's now 30 years old. He's believed to have ties to both Ecuador, where he was born, and Florida, and his last known address on Staten Island was 230 Ada Drive.

OTHER TOP CASES

RAYYAN MAHFOOZ

The 22-year-old and another suspect were arrested, and later indicted, in connection with a string of three burglaries in August and September 2005.

In one of the break-ins, they grabbed collectible baseball cards and a newspaper from the day of the John F. Kennedy assassination, according to prosecutors.

He jumped bail, and remains at large.

SERGET LINNIK

The suspect, also 22, and a 15-year-old accomplice were both indicted in connection with a Dec. 29, 2004 robbery near the Staten Island Ferry that left a man stabbed in the abdomen.

The attackers demanded money for vodka, beat and stabbed the man, and got $15.

The 15-year-old pleaded guilty on May 3, 2005, but Linnik never showed up for court that day, and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest.

TRAVIS JONES

Jones, now 21, is accused of shooting a man in the stomach in a Rosebank playground on June 1, 2008.

The shooting stemmed from an argument over the score in a basketball game -- a game, it turned out, Jones wasn't even playing in at the time, prosecutors say.

RAY McINTOSH

The 35-year-old was the target of a gang investigation in March 2007, when detectives raided his home at 35 Victory Boulevard.

When they searched the toilet tank in the bathroom, police found a pound of marijuana, separated into 437 ziplock bags, and a loaded .380 caliber handgun, according to prosecutors.

He was released on $15,000 bail, and remains at large.

PETER FAM

Fam, who is now 20, is accused of violating the conditions of his probation on a 2007 gang sexual-assault case because he allegedly stabbed a man in the stomach during a Fourth of July house party in 2008.

He was slated to be re-sentenced on the sex case that July, but never showed up for court.

EMANUEL PARKER

The 24-year-old is accused of raping one of his girlfriend's relatives, while they stayed overnight in the woman's apartment on Jan. 8, 2010.

The woman was sleeping when Parker raped her, and when she realized he wasn't her husband, Parker held her down, prosecutors say.

BERTREM JAYASOORIYA

Now 37, he was a cook at Ruddy & Dean on Sept. 11, 2004, when he stabbed a waiter who was demanding a pizza order that he hadn't finished yet, prosecutors say.

The waiter ended up with a long gash in his stomach, but survived the ordeal.